Ratings

Fox News No Longer Number One

Posted by on April 2, 2008 at 1:55 am. 24 Comments :

Continuing a long pattern of decline, Fox News once again underperforms its competitors. The first quarter of a presidential election year can generally be expected to boost viewership for news networks. For CNN and MSNBC this has been markedly apparent. For Fox News…not so much.

As a result of the hyper-growth of CNN’s prime time schedule (persons 25-54), they actually finished ahead of Fox News for the first time in six years. Another quarter like this and Fox will finish third behind both CNN and MSNBC.

The stagnation of Fox’s audience can be traced in part to the downward spiral of the Bush presidency. Fox has long tethered its fortunes to a conservative ideology that has fallen out of favor. Now they have trouble attracting either viewers or guests from the more moderate and/or progressive population. They also have an age problem. Fox News has both the oldest skewing audience and the oldest prime time line-up. That combination produces a staleness that is reflected in their ratings. It’s ironic that the Republican candidate for president is also the oldest to ever run for the office. He should be a perfect fit for Fox, if not for America.

In addition to CNN’s win over Fox in the average ratings statistics, Fox has fallen to fourth place (with 24.5 million) in cumulative ratings, behind CNN (33.2), MSNBC (28.4), and Headline News (25.9). Cumes represent the number of the network’s unique viewers and are arguably a more precise measure for news programming (explanation here).

So contrary to the boasting of Fox News narcissists, they are not the ratings juggernaut that they would have you believe. In fact, sooner than many might have predicted, they will be reduced to also-rans. In advance of that you can expect that they will fiddle with their programming to deliver even more sensationalistic, high decibel, conflict-driven fare that virtually drips with steamy melodrama, controversy and a nightmarish dread of Muslims, immigrants and Democrats.

Fasten your seatbelts.

A Tucker Carlson Post Mortem

Posted by on March 25, 2008 at 12:06 pm. NO Comments :

Tucker Carlson - True Washington StoryThe first full week of the post-Tucker era on MSNBC validates the long overdue decision to cancel the perennial loser. David Gregory’s new program, “Race for the White House,” outperformed Tucker by 35% (Gregory’s first week vs. Tucker’s last week). What’s more, on Friday, Gregory was the second highest rated program on MSNBC’s evening schedule (trailing only Countdown and beating Hardball). He also came in second against his competition, surpassing Wolf Blitzer’s Situation Room on CNN. Tucker never came close to these achievements.

While Gregory’s show is a conventional affair that doesn’t do much to differentiate itself from the cable news mediocrity, at least it isn’t hosted by an aggressively obnoxious (and obnoxiously aggressive) trust-fund pundit with a grating personality. That was probably worth 15% right off the bat.

Tucker Carlson: The Biggest Loser

Posted by on March 3, 2008 at 3:06 am. 1 Comments :

Somebody tell me why Tucker Carlson still has a television show. Seriously! Is there anyone at MSNBC who reads News Corpse? I want an answer. I just can’t figure out what’s going through their heads.

Tucker has been the worst performing program on the MSNBC primetime lineup for as long as he’s been on. And he rarely notches anything above last place versus his competition. That record of defeat has predictably repeated itself for February 2008.

Tucker February 2008

What does it take to get canceled by this network. Does Tucker have to insult a women’s basketball team to get the ax? There are many examples of him insulting women, like when he said about Hillary Clinton that, “there’s just something about her that feels castrating, overbearing, and scary.” Then there is the time he said Obama “seems like kind of a wuss,” and “sounds like a pothead.” Now he has taken to inviting the most repugnant guests he can dig up. Last month he hosted Jonah “Liberal Fascism” Goldberg and Roger “C.U.N.T.” Stone.

But the network doesn’t need a scandal to ditch Tucker. They just need a desire to get better ratings and make more money. Isn’t that what they’re in business for? Tucker’s show is an expensive flop and it is bringing down the shows adjacent to it. As I’ve said on many previous occasions, there is simply no business case for keeping this show on the air. And yet it’s still there.

It’s not like MSNBC doesn’t have some recent experience with success on which to draw. Keith Olbermann’s Countdown continues to surge and is the fastest growing program on cable news. Last Thursday it even scored a #1 ranking, beating its nemesis, Bill O’Reilly. But even when it doesn’t come out on top, it’s a more valuable asset. O’Reilly’s audience is not particularly appealing to advertisers. Only 17% of its total viewers are in the coveted 25-54 demographic. Countdown’s audience in the demo is 40%.

So what’s wrong with MSNBC? Why don’t they want to emulate their successes and eject their failures? Since there are no arguments from a business perspective for keeping him, then what are their arguments? There is good cause to suspect that their motivations are not wholly reputable. Either someone is doing someone else a favor, or some political bias is being exerted, or Tucker has photographs of an executive in a compromising situation. It’s worth remembering also, that Tucker is the son of Richard Warner Carlson, a former U.S. ambassador, director of the U.S. Information Agency, and president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. There is plenty of room for salacious speculation, but what there is little supply of is reason.

Any half-way sane television professional would have canceled this loser long ago. I think it’s time the viewers get involved and demand that MSNBC account for themselves. If, as I suspect, they are protecting Tucker due to some unsavory and secret compact, then they are violating a public trust and they need to come clean. Write to MSNBC and ask them to explain why Tucker is still on the air despite his dismal performance. Ask them why they are protecting a program that has never delivered for them. Feel free to cite the data in this article and ask for specific answers. In the pursuit of journalistic ethics and transparency, we have a right to know.

MSNBC Viewer Services

Fox News – Still First In Being Last

Posted by on February 27, 2008 at 9:16 pm. 19 Comments :

Cable News Ratings Feb 2008Once again, Fox News brings up the rear in the cable news-stakes. With an increase in total viewers of just 16% from February 2007 to February 2008, Fox trailed MSNBC (up 62%) and CNN (up 133%) by wide margins. CNN’s numbers may have been inflated by an unusually large audience for its debate telecast. But that would not account for the bulk of the disparity. Note that MSNBC’s increase occurred without any such special event programming.

This is becoming so redundant that I think I’ll just quote myself from the last ratings report I wrote:

“For those seeking an explanation for the disparity between Fox and the rest of the news purveyors, you need look no further than the content and style for which Fox has become famous. The influence of rightists in the government and the media is dissipating. As it does so, the noise level on Fox News is swelling to an earsplitting shriek. They are descending (and condescending) into a desperation fueled by their own crumbling credibility. They are finding it increasingly difficult to lure fair-minded commentators and public figures to appear on their tainted air. The refusal of Democrats to participate in Fox-sponsored debates is having a real impact on both the network’s performance and their perception as the Republican house organ. That effort must continue and broaden to include ANY appearance by Democrats or progressives (see Starve The Beast) The result of this cold shoulder is an over-reliance by Fox on plainly biased personalities like their newest contributors, Tony Snow, Rick Santorum, and Karl Rove. I expect we will also be seeing a lot more of Dick Morris, Ann Coulter, and Bill Kristol, as the Foxians resort to just interviewing one another.”

Still true. But wait…There’s more!

I did an analysis of the televised debates this election cycle that reveals some interesting trends. Since April 26, 2007, there have been 30 debates split evenly between Democrats and Republicans. Four of the top 5 rated broadcasts were Democratic debates. Fox News had only one debate in the top 10. All of the Fox debates were Republican affairs as the Democrats have sworn off debating on the network. That strategy appears to have paid off in a couple of significant ways. First, it denied Fox the opportunity to cast more of its slime onto Democrats. Second, Fox missed out on the higher revenues they would have received from the more popular Democratic debates.

It’s a win/win.

Stop The Presses: Bill O’Reilly is patting himself and his network on the back for their ratings performance:

“…just about everybody else on FNC had a good month, because we are patriots.”

If they are patriots because of their paltry 16% gain, then CNN and MSNBC must be candidates for sainthood with national holidays pending. I sure hope I’m not in the vicinity when his ego bursts.

Sub-Prime(Time) Meltdown Hits Fox News Where It Hurts

Posted by on February 4, 2008 at 6:11 am. NO Comments :

Over the past year there has been a broad array of economic and political indicators that have been trending generally downward. In the U.S. jobs having been declining, as have exports. Construction has pulled back and property values have fallen. Wages are not keeping pace with inflation. At the same time, approval ratings for President Bush have cratered and Republican Party registration is down. GOP primary voters are showing up at the polls in significantly lower numbers than Democratic voters.

Not surprisingly, this social climate crisis is also being reflected in the market performance of the Fox News Channel. For 2007, Fox News squeezed out a meager ratings increase of 4%. While that was enough to beat the somnambulent CNN’s 2% gain, it was far short of the surging 32% rise enjoyed by MSNBC.

Fox 2007

The new year didn’t produce much to brighten Fox’s spirits. Despite the abundance of news, Fox still managed to lag far behind its competitors. Here is a sampling of some of the important events that took place in January:

  • Primary contests in six states
  • Nine nationally televised debates (two of which were on Fox News)
  • Benazir Bhutto’s assassination in the last days of 2007
  • Deadly violence increased in Iraq
  • Bush delivered his last ever State of the Union Address
  • The stock market suffered historic declines (the worst January for the Dow in 7 years, 17 for the S&P 500, and the worst ever for the Nasdaq)
  • Britany was committed.

This sort of activity usually triggers increased viewing for news networks. Indeed, that was the case for CNN which rose 42% for the month, and MSNBC which nabbed a 37% gain. However, Fox pulled up the rear with a paltry 9% uptick. At a time when viewers are tuning in to news with greater frequency, Fox is being left behind while its competitors are reaping rich rewards.

For those seeking an explanation for the disparity between Fox and the rest of the news purveyors, you need look no further than the content and style for which Fox has become famous. The influence of rightists in the government and the media is dissipating. As it does so, the noise level on Fox News is swelling to an earsplitting shriek. They are descending (and condescending) into a desperation fueled by their own crumbling credibility. They are finding it increasingly difficult to lure fair-minded commentators and public figures to appear on their tainted air. The refusal of Democrats to participate in Fox-sponsored debates is having a real impact on both the network’s performance and their perception as the Republican house organ. That effort must continue and broaden to include ANY appearance by Democrats or progressives (Starve The Beast) The result of this cold shoulder is an over-reliance by Fox on plainly biased personalities like their newest contributors, Tony Snow, Rick Santorum, and Karl Rove. I expect we will also be seeing a lot more of Dick Morris, Ann Coulter, and Bill Kristol, as the Foxians resort to just interviewing one another.

The current stable of Fox News hosts are becoming noticeably more shrill. Chris Wallace recently branded Democrats as “damned fools” for their refusal to be abused by Fox demagogues. Bill O’Reilly went positively crackers as he shoved an aide to Senator Obama because the aide was blocking his view. John Gibson didn’t see anything wrong with making offensive and homophobic jokes about Heath Ledger on the same day the actor died.

Fox News is in a sort of journalistic death spiral of its own. The more people tune them out, the higher they turn up the volume on their idiocy amplifier (and they’re already way past eleven). Then even more people tune out. This process will continue until no one is left but the brain-damaged spawn of a Coulter/Limbaugh clone experiment gone horribly awry.

Fox has already destroyed any pretense of credibility that they might have hoped to use to delude the weak members of the herd, and now they are simply becoming a parody of themselves. They still have a surplus of habitual viewers that may take a while to wind down. But the time is coming when their ratings will be struggling to keep up with the Bass Fishing Channel. And their programming will be just as exciting and newsworthy.

Fox Business Network Limps Out Of The Gate

Posted by on January 5, 2008 at 6:11 pm. NO Comments :

The new Fox Business Network may not be living up to the hype.

Although Nielsen ratings are not being officially released, numbers have leaked that don’t auger well for Murdoch’s new baby:

“After less than three months on the air, Fox Business Network is averaging a mere 6,000 viewers in daytime and 15,000 in primetime”

Putting that in perspective, FBN’s main competition is CNBC which averages 284,000 viewers in total day and 238,000 in primetime. And CNBC passes 90 million homes, about three times as many as FBN. Of course, it is still too early to gloat, but the network’s honchos led us to believe that they had much higher expectations. Roger Ailes told us that he would not settle for “anything short of a revolution.” And Murdoch gave this comment a few days after the launch:

“It’s two and a half to three days old and looks just terrific. Everybody, even in the industry, (recognizes) how different it is to CNBC, which is half-dead,”

It appears that the FBN revolution is having a little trouble taking on their half-dead competition. Time will deliver a fuller picture, but clearly FBN has work to do. However, rather than getting down to business, FBN’s executive vice president, Kevin Magee, is just sniping at CNBC, whom he accuses of having leaked these numbers:

“They spent dearly to get [FBN ratings], which is pretty crazy […] I think it shows how uber-concerned they are about us.”

Actually, it’s pretty much routine to get competitive ratings from Nielsen. And when you consider that Murdoch is well known for deficit financing his ventures indefinitely, it is a fairly hollow complaint that CNBC is investing in itself. This sort of griping just makes one wonder who is uber-concerned about whom?

Glenn Beck’s Ratings: Headline Snooze

Posted by on December 13, 2007 at 4:44 pm. 43 Comments :

When CNN announced the hiring of radio talk jock Glenn Beck almost two years ago, they used words like “cordial,” “conversational” and “not confrontational” to describe him. What they delivered was the polar opposite of that, as has been well documented by Media Matters. Despite CNN’s laughable depiction of Beck as “Miss Congeniality,” they knew exactly the sort of piffle they were peddling. Their programming strategy stated at the time was to…

“…build Beck into the type of TV personality that could siphon viewers from Bill O’Reilly, Joe Scarborough and other conservative hosts.”

They failed.

Beck’s ratings for November 2007 (25-54 demo) reveal a program on life support. At this point the humane thing to do would be to pull the plug and put Beck (and innocent TV viewers) out of their misery.

As shown here, Beck loses to all of his competitors in cable news. Both his live show and his repeat come in 4th out of four programs. That doesn’t leave much for him to brag about.

But that’s not the end of his problems. While Beck is unable to challenge his competition, he is also the weakest link on his own network.

On this chart you can see that the two lowest rated hours on Headline News belong to Beck. He is a TV anchor who is performing like a ship’s anchor and weighing down the network’s line-up.

This is not a case of Headline News being a less widely distributed network. Both Nancy Grace and Showbiz Tonight would either beat or play competitively against MSNBC’s schedule. Grace would even threaten CNN’s Lou Dobbs were she in the time slot.

These numbers demonstrate an inherent weakness that is specific to Beck. This is confirmed by looking at his year-to-year performance which is virtually flat. Beck’s audience in the demo for November 2006 was 148K (live) and 142K (repeat). That is essentially unchanged for 2007. For the same time period Grace’s numbers improved 20% (live), and 15% (repeat). Showbiz Tonight added 34% over their 2006 showing. So Beck is not only the poorest performer against his competition, he cannot even keep up with the growth on his own network.

It is also notable that Beck’s unpopularity seems to be confined to his television persona. In other media he is still a figure to be reckoned with. He is a top five talk radio host (last month he re-signed with Premiere Networks for $50 million) and he currently has a book on the New York Times Bestseller list. He certainly has fans who are able to find and consume his products elsewhere. So the fact that Beck can’t parlay his other media successes into something better than a washout on TV illustrates just how deeply unappealing he is as a television personality.

Glenn Beck WeakFor more evidence of this you just need to look back at the week Beck filled in for Paula Zahn last July. Despite moving up to CNN from Headline News, Beck barely scraped up the viewers he routinely got at his less-watched network home, Headline News. And he underperformed Zahn, who was canceled for poor ratings, by a whopping 23%

Clearly Beck has not lived up to the expectations CNN expressed when they hired him. And his performance over time suggests that there is not much reason to believe that he will improve. A responsible programmer would be seeking to cut their losses. And it’s not as if they don’t have a broad variety of AAA players that could be called up: Ed Schultz, Randi Rhodes, Thom Hartmann, Rachel Maddow, Stephanie Miller, Sam Seder, Taylor Marsh, Jim Hightower, Laura Flanders, Harry Shearer, or any other of the many distinguished progressive commentators. They could even draft their own Jack Cafferty who has developed a cult following on The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer.

You would think that the programming honchos at the network would be furiously grooming Beck’s replacement. Why wouldn’t they? They can’t blame Beck’s subterranean ratings on a generalized lack of interest because Beck excels in other media markets. They can’t be holding out for a sudden audience surge because there’s been no evidence of him connecting on that level in the past. They can’t believe that a racist, uninformed, arrogant host with a juvenile sense of humor is the next big thing in broadcasting because Fox News already has that market cornered and their ratings are sinking like a stone. And somebody at CNN must surely have noticed the soaring ascendancy of Keith Olbermann’s Countdown on MSNBC. It’s also worth noting that Dan Abrams’ new program, retooled to take a more aggressively honest approach to the news, is kicking Beck’s butt even though it is only a few weeks old.

So what is CNN waiting for? Are they masochistic gluttons for punishment who get pleasure from losing? Are they married to the repulsive and repudiated ideology spewed by Beck? Are they frightened, ineffectual, corporate bootlickers who couldn’t make a proper programming decision without a sackful of surveys and permission from their supervisor? It is just this simple: There is no business case for keeping Beck on the air. His program is a money pit and it’s fiscally harmful to the programs adjacent to it and, therefore, the network as a whole.

The only reason to give Beck a stay of execution would be fealty to the brand of caveman conservatism that he espouses. If CNN doesn’t cancel this stinker they will have settled, once and for all, the speculation as to whether they are a compromised media lapdog with an agenda aimed at placating the powerful and debasing journalism.

It’s time to pull the plug. Let CNN/Headline News know that Glenn Beck has to go. Let them know that you’re on to them and that keeping a loser like Beck reveals their biases. Let them know that you’re more interested in news and honest commentary than shallow contrarianism. Let them know that, although CNN has an obligation to provide diverse viewpoints, they have never had a program hosted by a progressive. And let them know that you have alternatives now (i.e. MSNBC, radio, the Internet, etc.) and you will not continue to watch CNN as long as it fails to provide programming that is honest, ethical and relevant to you, your community and your country.

CNN General Comments Form
Headline News General Comments Form

Bill O’Reilly: Censorship, Lies And Plunging Popularity

Posted by on November 28, 2007 at 12:12 pm. 1 Comments :

A couple of days ago Bill O’Reilly again demonstrated his aversion to free expression as well as his penchant for dishonesty. An op-ed that appeared in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (a paper that O’Reilly regularly castigates as “far-left loons”) laid out a case for Impeachment: If not now, when? The column was accompanied by a political cartoon that had Bush and Cheney dressed up for their mugshots.

That was more than enough to set O’Reilly off on a rant that amounted to a call for censorship (YouTube):

“Look at this. This is ridiculous […] It’s based on nothing […] I want you to excoriate them. Let them have it […] It’s wrong though for them to do it. Don’t you think that showing a mug shot of a sitting president, a sitting vice president is irresponsible?”

O’Reilly is outraged that anyone would exercise their First Amendment rights to express an opinion about the criminality of this administration. He believes that such open expression “diminishes intelligent conversation,” (as if O’Reilly ever engaged in one) and his response is to shut down conversation entirely. Note that O’Reilly is complaining about the cartoon, not the content of the article. Although he does say that the cartoon is “based on nothing,” despite the fact that it is attached to a well-documented column that enumerates specific justifications for investigating the President and his administration.

After once again calling the paper “loons,” (an example of his idea of “intelligent conversation”) O’Reilly attacks the paper’s credibility by smugly declaring that it has lost 40% of its readers in the past ten years:

“Almost half of their readers have said ‘We don’t like you anymore, we’re not going to read you.'”

What O’Reilly leaves out is any actual context that would enlighten his viewers. The truth is that almost all major newspapers have suffered sharp declines in circulation over the past ten years. But more to the point, in only two years (Sept 2005 to Sept 2007) Bill O’Reilly himself has lost 33% of his total viewers and a whopping 59% of viewers in the all-important 25-54 age group. That’s more than half of his viewers saying, “We don’t like you anymore, we’re not going to watch you.”

This brief exchange reveals much about O’Reilly. It shows that while he is vociferously objecting to the free speech rights of others, he will use his own platform to misinform his viewers. No wonder they don’t like him anymore.

Tucker Carlson Gets A Vote Of No Confidence

Posted by on November 23, 2007 at 1:34 pm. 1 Comments :

MSNBC has been accused by many rightist pundits of adopting a liberal editorial policy. The sole basis of this charge appears to be the existence of Keith Olbermann’s Countdown. In an interview with NPR, MSNBC Sr VP Phil Griffin denies the charge saying that it is the host’s personalities, not their positions that make them popular. So Tucker’s already starting at a disadvantage. Griffin acknowledges that the network is trading on the audience identifying with the program’s anchors.

“Keith Olbermann is our brand; Chris Matthews is our brand. These are smart, well-informed people who have a real sense of history and can put things in context.”

That is an unequivocal expression of the faith Griffin has in Olbermann and Matthews. But when he is specifically asked whether Tucker Carlson is also their brand, he pauses and says…

“He is right now.”

Not exactly a vote of confidence. Griffin seems to be hinting that his answer might be different if you ask him again in a week or two. Looks like the only thing Tucker has to be thankful for is his well-connected family and a contract for an upcoming TV game show pilot. I still can’t get over this project – a remake of “Who Do You Trust?”

The remainder of the segment featured a couple of choice comments from Olbermann:

On his righteous cynicism: “We gave these people every benefit of the doubt. Our naturally contentious political arrangement in this country was silenced for well over a year after 9/11. We got hosed. We were manipulated. That trust that we put in these people, they did not deserve.”

On O’Reilly’s dementia: “As usual, Bill-O’s King Lear act, in which he threatens somebody with terrible consequences and boycotts and plagues of locusts, has produced nothing tangible other than making the object of his impotent rage richer.”

Speaking of Bill-O, his frantic efforts to disparage NBC and his nemesis Keith Olbermann (whom he refers to as “the smear guy”) are butting up against reality. O’Reilly has been falsely bashing NBC as a network in total decline, but the truth is that NBC News beat ABC and CBS in total viewers for the 2006/2007 season. And on the heels of Brian Williams’ appearance on Saturday Night Live, NBC has won the 25-54 demo for the month of November so far. O’Reilly’s analysis, as usual, is worthless, unless you’re really into childish fiction.

Fox Business Not Hurting Business At CNBC

Posted by on November 19, 2007 at 1:35 pm. NO Comments :

It’s been a month since the launch of the Fox Business Network. Actual ratings data won’t be available for a few more months but data on CNBC is available. To the extent that you can speculate as to FBN’s performance based on the performance of it’s main competitor, there is no particularly good news for the fledgling net.

For the month that FBN has been on the air, CNBC has grown 32% in total daytime viewers and 21% in total viewers for the full day. Of course, there could be other reasons for the ratings growth, but there is obviously no noticeable dip for CNBC as a result of the competition from Fox.

To underscore why viewers may want to stay away from FBN, on Friday they interrupted their news chatter with an alert that Apple was buying an 8% stake in chip maker, AMD. After about a minute they corrected the report saying that it was not Apple, but the government of Abu Dhabi (which both anchors mispronounced) that was buying in to AMD. That minute was plenty of time for investors to have made trades and, subsequently, lost money.

More reasons: On Tuesday FBN reported that Hewlett-Packard missed their earnings estimate by a penny. Eleven minutes later they admitted that they had erroneously reported the net income instead of the operating income, which actually beat estimates by four cents. I really hope that no one is trading based on what they see on FBN.